The Edwardians

by Vita Sackville-West

  Oh, the weariness of life, she thought, sitting down at her dressing table; and then she remembered how Leonard Anquetil had looked at her when she had shown him the garden after tea, and a slight zest for life revived. She sat with lowered eyes, smiling a downward smile, while her thoughts dawdled over Leonard Anquetil and her fingers played with the jewels laid out on the dressing table. She had recently had the family jewels reset by Cartier, preferring the fashion of the day to the heavy gold settings of Victoria’s time. The top of the dressing table was of looking glass, so that the gems were duplicated; rubies tonight, she thought idly, picking up a brooch and setting it down again; last night she had worn the emeralds, and her depression returned as she reflected that someday she would have to give up the jewels to Sebastian’s wife. She did not want to become either a dowager or a grandmother; she did not want to renounce her position as mistress of Chevron. Its luxury and splendour were very pleasant to her. Perhaps she would end by marrying Sir Adam after all, before Sebastian and his bride could turn her out; it would be a come-down to marry a Jew, and physically Sir Adam was not appetising, but then his millions were fabulous, and she could make him buy a place quite as imposing as Chevron. Not as beautiful, perhaps, but quite as imposing. Her hands strayed over the rubies; yes, and he would buy jewels for her too; her own, this time; no question of heirlooms. Besides, Sir Adam could do whatever he liked with the King. If only Sir Adam were not physically in love with her, she might really consider it.

  Sebastian came in, and Lucy became brisk again.

  “Give me a wrap, Button. You can start doing my hair. Sebastian, give me the plan of the dinner table. On the table there. No, silly boy. Button, give it to his Grace. Now, Sebastian, read it out to me while I have my hair done. Oh, George Roehampton takes me in, does he? Must he? Such a bore that man is. And Sir Adam the other side. Don’t pull my hair like that, Button; really, I never knew such a clumsy woman; now you have given me a headache for the rest of the evening. Do be more careful. Well, I am not going to enjoy myself very much, I can see: Sir Adam and George Roehampton. However, it’s inevitable. Or no, let me see for myself. That Miss Wace is such a fool that she may quite well have made a muddle of the whole thing. Come and hold the plan for me to see, Sebastian. Button! you pulled my hair again. How many times must I tell you to be careful? Once more, and I give you notice, I declare I will. Tilt it up, Sebastian; I can’t see.”

  Sebastian stood beside his mother holding the red leather pad, with slits into which cards bearing the names of the guests were inserted. As she stood holding it, he watched his mother’s reflection in the mirror. With her fair hair and lively little crumpled face, she looked extraordinarily young for her age as a rule, but now she was busily applying cream and wiping the cosmetics from her face with a handkerchief, at the same time as Button removed the pads from under her hair and laid them on the dressing table. ‘Rats,’ her children called them. They were unappetising objects, like last year’s birds-nests, hot and stuffy to the head, but they could not be dispensed with, since they provided the foundation on which the coiffure was to be swathed and piled, and into which the innumerable hairpins were to be stuck. It was always a source of great preoccupation with the ladies that no bit of the pad should show through the natural hair. Often they put up a tentative hand to feel, even in the midst of the most absorbing conversation; and then their faces wore the expression which is seen only on the faces of women whose fingers investigate the back of their heads. Sebastian had watched this hair-dressing process a hundred times, but now seeing it take place in the mirror, he observed it with a new eye. He stared at his mother’s reflection, with the pool of rubies in the foreground, and the uncomely ‘rats,’ as though she were a stranger to him, realising that behind the glitter and animation in which they lived he had absolutely no knowledge of her. If he had been asked to describe his mother, he must have said, “She is a famous hostess, with a talent for mimicry and a genius for making parties a success. She is charming and vivacious. In private life she is often irritable and sometimes unkind. She likes bridge and racing. She never opens a book, and she cannot bear to be alone. I have not the faintest idea of what she is really like.” He would not have added, because he did not know, that she was ruthless and predatory.

  “Why are you staring like that, Sebastian? You make me quite shy.” Her hair was about her shoulders now, and Button was busy with the curling-tongs. She heated them first on the spirit lamp, and then held them carefully to her own cheek to feel if they were hot enough. “Bless the boy, one would think he had never watched me dress before. Now about that dinner table, yes, it’s all wrong; I thought it would be. She has clean forgotten the ambassador. Button, you must call Miss Wace—no, Sebastian, you fetch her. No, ring the bell; I don’t want you to go away. Why on earth can’t people do their own jobs properly? What do I pay Wacey a hundred and fifty a year for, I should like to know? Oh dear, and look at the time; I shall be late for dinner. I declare the trouble of entertaining is enough to spoil all one’s pleasure. It’s a little hard, I do think, that one should never have any undiluted pleasure in life. Who’s that at the door? Button, go and see. And Miss Wace must come at once.”

  “Lady Viola would like to know if she may come and say good night to your Grace.”

  “Oh, bother the child—well, yes, I suppose she must if she wants to. Now, Button, haven’t you nearly finished? Don’t drag my hair back like that, woman. Give me the tail comb. Don’t you see, it wants more fullness at the side. Really, Button, I thought you were supposed to be an expert hair-dresser. You may think yourself lucky, Sebastian, that you were born a boy. This eternal hair, these eternal clothes! they wear a woman out before her time. Oh, there you are, Miss Wace. This plan is all wrong—perfectly hopeless. I don’t go in with Lord Roehampton at all. “What about the ambassador? You must alter it. Do it in here, as quick as you can. Sebastian will help you. And Viola. Come in, Viola; don’t look so scared, child; I can’t bear people who look scared. Now I must leave you all while I wash. No, I don’t want you now, Button; you get on my nerves. I’ll call you when I want you. Get my dress ready. Children, help Miss Wace—yes, you too, Viola; it’s high time you took a little trouble to help your poor mother—and do, all three of you, try to show a little intelligence.”

  The duchess retired into her dressing room, from where she kept up a flow of comments.

  “Viola, you must really take a little more trouble about your appearance. You looked a perfect fright at luncheon today; I was ashamed of you. And you really must talk more, instead of sitting there like a stuffed doll. You had that nice Mr. Anquetil, who is perfectly easy to get on with. You might be ten, instead of seventeen. I have a good mind to start you coming down to dinner, except that you would cast a blight over everything. Girls are such a bore—poor things, they can’t help it, but really they are a problem. They ruin conversation; one has to be so careful. Women ought to be married, or at any rate widowed. I don’t mean you, of course, Wacey. I’m ready for you, Button.”

  Button vanished into the dressing room, and for a while there was silence, broken only by irritable exclamations from within. These inner mysteries of his mother’s toilet were unknown to Sebastian, but Viola knew well enough what was going on: her mother was seated, poking at her hair meanwhile with fretful but experienced fingers, while Button knelt before her, carefully drawing the silk stockings on to her feet and smoothing them nicely up the leg. Then her mother would rise, and, standing in her chemise, would allow the maid to fit the long stays of pink coutil, heavily boned, round her hips and slender figure, fastening the busk down the front, after many adjustments; then the suspenders would be clipped to the stockings; then the lacing would follow, beginning at the waist and travelling gradually up and down, until the necessary proportions had been achieved. The silk laces and their tags would fly out, under the maid’s deft fingers, with the flick of a skilled worker mending a net. Then the pads of pi
nk satin would be brought, and fastened into place on the hips and under the arms, still further to accentuate the smallness of the waist. Then the drawers; and then the petticoat would be spread into a ring on the floor, and Lucy would step into it on her high-heeled shoes, allowing Button to draw it up and tie the tapes. Then Button would throw the dressing gown round her shoulders again—Viola had followed the process well, for here the door opened, and the duchess emerged. “Well, have you done that table? Read it out. Louder. I can’t hear. Yes, that’s better. I’m sorry, Sebastian, you’ll have to take in old Octavia Hull again. Nonsense, she’s very amusing when she’s not too fuddled with drugs. She’ll be all right tonight because she’ll be afraid of losing too much money to Sir Adam after dinner. Now, Wacey, off you go and rearrange the cards on the table. And you too, Viola. There are too many people in this room. Oh, all right, you can stop till I’m dressed if you like. Button, I’m ready for my dress. Now be careful. Don’t catch the hooks in my hair, Sebastian, you must turn round while I take off my dressing gown. Now, Button.”

  Button, gathering up the lovely mass of taffeta and tulle, held the bodice open while the Duchess flung off her wrap and dived gingerly into the billows of her dress. Viola watched enraptured the sudden gleam of her mother’s white arms and shoulders. Button breathed a sigh of relief as she began doing up the innumerable hooks at the back. But Lucy could not stand still for a moment, and strayed all over the room with Button in pursuit, hooking. “Haven’t you finished yet, Button? Nonsense, it isn’t tight. You’ll say next that I’m getting fat.” Lucy was proud of her waist, which indeed was tiny, and had changed since her girlish days only from eighteen to twenty inches. “Only when your Grace stoops,” said Button apologetically, for Lucy at the moment was bending forward and peering into her mirror as she puffed the roll of her hair into a rounder shape. “There, then,” said the Duchess, straightening herself, but reaching down stiffly for the largest of her rubies, which she tried first against her shoulder, but finally pinned into a knot at her waist. Then she encircled her throat with the high dog-collar of rubies and diamonds, tied with a large bow of white tulle at the back. “You must choose a wife who will do credit to the jewels, Sebastian,” she said as she slipped an earring into its place, “because, of course, the day will come when your poor old mother has to give up everything to her daughter-in-law, and we shan’t like that—eh, Button?”—for she was in a better humour now, again completely adorned and clothed—”but we’ll put up with it for the joy of seeing a bride brought to Chevron—eh, Button? eh, Wacey? oh, no, of course Wacey has gone to do the table—and you and I, Button, will retire to the Dower House and live humbly for the rest of our lives, and perhaps his Grace will ask us to the garden-party—eh, Sebastian, you rogue?—will you, if your wife allows it?” Lucy was herself again, adjusting her frock, clasping her bracelets, dusting her throat with powder—for she was one of those who used powder, to the disapproval of her elders—and everybody except Sebastian was radiant with responsive smiles. She flicked her handkerchief across Sebastian’s lips. “Sulky boy! but Sylvia Roehampton says you are even more attractive when you sulk than when you are amiable, so I suppose I must believe her. Now Viola, my darling, I must run. Kiss me good night. Go straight to bed. Do I look nice?”

  “Oh, mother, you look too lovely!”

  “That’s all right.” Lucy liked as much admiration as she could get. “Now you’ll run away to bed, won’t you? Dear me, I quite envy you the quiet of the schoolroom instead of that noisy dinner. Don’t you, Sebastian? Good-night, my darling. Come along, Sebastian. I shall want you to wait up for me, Button, of course. You go in front, Sebastian, and open the doors. Dear, dear, how late you children have made me. Sebastian, you must apologise to old Octavia at dinner, and tell her it was all your fault. My fan, Button! good heavens, woman, what are you there for? One has to think of everything for oneself.”

  Those meals! Those endless, extravagant meals, in which they all indulged all the year round! Sebastian wondered how their constitutions and their figures could stand it; then he remembered that in the summer they went as a matter of course to Homburg or Marienbad, to get rid of the accumulated excess, and then returned to start on another year’s course of rich living. Really there was very little difference, essentially, between Marienbad and the vomitorium of the Romans. How strange that eating should play so important a part in social life! They were eating quails and cracking jokes. That particular dish of the Chevron chef was famous: an ortolan within the quail, a truffle within the ortolan, and pâté de fois gras within the truffle; by the time all the disembowelling had taken place, there was not much left of any of the constituents. From his place at the head of the table, Sebastian watched the jaws going up and down, and wished that he did not always see people as though they were caricatures. There was Sir Harry Tremaine, the perfect courtier, with his waved white hair, turning his head rigidly above his high collar, rather like a bird; there was Mrs. Levison, with her raucous voice and her hair like a frizzed yellow sponge. They were all people whose names were familiar to every reader of the society titbits in the papers. Sebastian saw them suddenly as a ventriloquist’s box of puppets. Fourteen down one side of the table, fourteen up the other; with himself and his mother at either end, that made thirty. Then his vision shifted, and he was obliged to admit that they were very ornamental. They seemed so perfectly concordant with their setting, as though they had not a care in the world; the jewels glittered, the shirt-fronts glistened; the servants came and went, handing dishes and pouring wine in the light of the many candles. The trails of smilax wreathed greenly in and out among the heavy candelabra and the dishes of grapes and peaches. Yes, he must admit that his mother’s friends were ornamental; he liked the bare shoulders and piled hair of the women, their pretty hands, and the bracelets round their wrists; the clouds of tulle, and the roses clasped by a brooch against the breast. His mother herself, whom he had so lately seen as a mask within her mirror, looked young and lovely now, so far away down the table; for a curious instant he imagined her, no longer his mother, but his wife. Then leaning towards her he saw the long nose of the Jew. “A tip for the Stock Exchange!” he thought; for his mother had explained to him, with unusual candour, exactly why she wanted him to be polite to Sir Adam. This passion for money was a thing Sebastian could not understand; he was rich; his mother practically controlled the spending of his fortune until he should be twenty-one; where was the need for more? It was simply part of her creed and the creed of her friends. Creed, greed; they rhymed. He was paying no attention to what his neighbour was saying. Yet Sebastian was said to have charming manners.

  After dinner, primed by his mother’s discreet signals, he moved round to talk to the Italian ambassador. He rather liked old Potini, a crank on the subject of the English character. Sebastian, depressed now and disgusted—for he suffered acutely from his moods—would have welcomed any argument, and knew he would get entertainment from old Potini, who was always bursting with things he wanted to say. Among the ruins of the dinner table, Sebastian drew a chair up beside him, holding a glass of port under the light, and old Potini began at once, rubbing his cigar between his fingers: “Ah, you young man! you fortunate young man! home from Oxford, I suppose? Yes, Oxford, that strange university where you young men live in segregation; a town of masculine citizens.” The ambassador’s English was faultless, if a trifle elaborate; the only thing which betrayed him was the rolling of his r’s. “Now such a thing, my dear duke,” he said, drawing his chair a little nearer to Sebastian and talking confidentially, “would be unthinkable in Italy. Or, indeed, in any Latin country. The English have no interest in women—in Woman, that is to say. What do you care about a pretty ankle? You think a lot about the fetlocks of your polo ponies, but when you look at a woman you rarely look below her face. Oh, I assure you. You yourself are nineteen—twenty? And what part do women play in your life? What do you do in the evenings at Oxford? You sit with your fr
iends, hugging your knees and smoking your pipe, and you talk about—what? Sport, politics. Woman might not exist; she is Bad Form. An evening in London now and then, I daresay,”—and his chuckle made Sebastian feel as though the ambassador had given him a dig in the ribs,—“then back to this male life among a thousand other young men, as though nothing had happened. Yes, you are a strange race, a secret race, ashamed of being natural. Now in Italy, at your age. . . .” The ambassador’s words threw Sebastian into an ill humour; he was stung, disturbed; he was ashamed of his virginity. People were not very real to him, and women least real of all. Little did he foresee, as he sat scowling at his wine, the adventure that was about to befall him. He wondered only how soon he might interrupt Potini, and suggest joining the ladies upstairs.

  “Nothing ever happens,” said Sebastian violently; “day after day goes by, and it is always the same.”

  “Happenings go in series,” said Lady Roehampton, “nothing happens, as you say; and then several things happen in a quick, odd succession. It is as though life had been gathering strength over a long period for an effort. Notice that for yourself. It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people’s experience, and one is only very gradually convinced by one’s own. Oh, my dear Sebastian,” she said—and she ceased to quote Mrs. Cheyne and spoke for once in all sincerity, remembering a young lover who had died—”think of all the people who have died too young to have learnt their own wisdom.”